Being the adventures of an English major working on a Ph.D. thesis about Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

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I feel like I’m running in two directions. There was a mail in my inbox from Mythlore magazine, and they are considering publishing my article on Pratchett and Tolkien – in 4 to 6 months, I should know more.

And almost at the same time, I have sent off my thesis summary to my professors with the feeling that there is either a horrible typo somewhere or that I should have written even more (but 9 pages ought to be enough, right?).

Hey y’all. My presentation on Pratchett went well – so well, in fact, that I can repeat it in a week at a meet’n’greet day for literary critics of our Uni. Now I’ll just have to translate my slides from English because the German seminar launched the whole event and I don’t want to confuse them any more than necessary.

Apart from that, next week’s lesson includes The Light Fantastic and the first half of Witches Abroad. I’ll still have to figure out how to squeeze in so much content into two hours.

Oh, and my new summary of my methodology and theoretical background is also due in a week. Once again, busy times, good times… this time with Adorno and Lyotard to follow me around. (Memo: Ghosts of postmodernism past and present?)

– An obscure book to review (google Arno Schmidt if you want to know more)

– An essay to give the final edge to

– A PhD rewriting to summarise

– A lesson for next Tuesday to prepare

– William Beckford’s Vathek to read for another essay

And of course my script and everything else I need to survive for this long coming weekend. I might send updates now and then (we do have internet even though we’re out in the country near somewhere called Lützelflüh), but only sporadically so if at all. In the worst case, you’ll hear from me next week! Check out my twitter account if you’d like to read some of my more obscure writings: https://twitter.com/TheCityofNames

Handing in 60 pages of your thesis after working on them for two months is like looking at something for too long. A shadow of it remains on your field of view and follows you around, casting ghostly silhouettes everywhere. It will eventually blur into the background, but an echo keeps reminding you of the next 60 pages that you could already be writing now…

And I’ve just found a page which I had filled with chapter overview scribbles earlier this month. I can’t really decide whether they make sense now before going to bed, but they do look promising. There are trolls and dwarfs in there. That’s a start.

Six more pages to edit. I’ll send in the excerpt by midnight this Friday, so it should be doable. I wanted to finish writing tonight, but I must have strained my brain because I have been staring at the same subchapter title for half an hour now, wondering what I meant with “The Edge of Reality”. I’m sure there is sense in it somewhere, I’ll just have to put some sleep between me and my text.

The ideas will probably come visit me again this night. Let’s hope that some of them are going to stay for tea tomorrow.